We may not be aware of it, but ordinary family homes in the U.S. and the rest of the world are not energy-efficient.

    Most of their energy goes to heating and cooling, and a lot of it is wasted, as warm air and cool air escape through fireplace chimneys and thin or poorly fitting windows and doors. A passive house loses almost none."Imagine a thermos(保温瓶),"said housing developer Brendan O'Neill."You have insulation(隔绝) everywhere, and it's basically completely sealed. And so the idea is to build a house like a thermos. So the windows are sealed. There's insulation completely surrounding the building. We make it as sealed as possible."

    A 147-square-meter passive house, presented by O'Neill Development Corp. as a demonstration unit just outside Washington, was brought to the site in two boxes. "Once it's set and put together, it takes about four weeks to complete the outside construction, to put down carpets," O'Neill said. "If everything is set in place, you put a house like this together in about four months.”The total cost of building it was $325,000, or about 17 percent more than constructing an ordinary house. But its utility(公用事业) bill is only around $20 monthly, or one-tenth the amount for the average house of the same size.

    While passive houses have been around for a long time, the idea has never taken root in the U.S. There was no driving force to push it.

    However, David Peabody, an architect who designs passive houses said, "I think climate change is now becoming a larger issue. And I think building standards are catching on to that. So people are becoming more aware of energy."Peabody said the cost of building passive houses could come down."What really makes sense for truly affordable housing," he said, "is to build multi-storey buildings."

    Ever wondered whether punishment actually makes people cooperate (合作)? A team of scientists created an experiment to figure it out and the results were pretty unexpected.

    To understand what they found, you have to know why these scientists were studying punishment. They were trying to figure out why people cooperate when it's often so easy to profit at others expense. Why don't friends steal from each other? Why do parents bother to feed their children? If the answer to these questions is obvious to you, congratulations, you are ahead of scientists. They're still trying to figure it out.

    In this experiment, researchers had 225 Chinese students play a game, where if the students cooperated, they'd all get a number of points. But if one defected (变节) and everyone else cooperated, the defector would get a lot of points, and the cooperators would lose out. This game represents a lot of real life situations where you struggle with a decision: work together and do OK, or run off with the rewards, ruining everybody else's day.

    This is actually a pretty ordinary economic experiment. But the researchers added two changes to see if they could mimic(糢拟)the real world better. Change one: some students played many rounds together, so they'd learn who they could trust. Change two: people could punish each other, sacrificing a point or two to destroy another player's score.

    In the end, the researchers found that playing multiple rounds made people cooperate more, which definitely mimics human society. But the whole punishment thing led to a surprise: punishing didn't actually make people cooperate more. In fact, it made them cooperate less.

    So the scientists still don't know why people cooperate, though it looks like it has more to do with groups sticking together than it does with punishment.

Do you like spicy food?

    What's your opinion on spicy food? Some people cannot handle even the smallest amount of chili-red pepper-in their dinner while others can't get enough of it.

    Scientists have long been puzzled by why some people love chili while others loathe it. Plenty of research has been done on the subject, dating as far back as the 1970s. Previous results showed that a love of chili is related to childhood experiences, and cultural influences affect our taste buds too. But the latest study has found that a person's love of spicy food may be linked to his or her personality more than anything else, CBC News reported.

    "We have always assumed that liking drives intake-we eat what we like and we like what we eat. But no one has actually directly bothered to connect these personality traits with intake of chili peppers,"said Professor John Hayes from Pennsylvania State University, who led the study.

    But before you look at the study, you should first know that "spicy" is not a taste, unlike sour, sweet, bitter and salty. It is, in fact, a burning sensation that you feel on the surface of your tongue. This got scientists thinking that maybe a love of spicy food is brought about by people's longing for thrill, something they usually get from watching action movies or riding a roller coaster.

    In the study, 97 participants, both male and female, were asked to fill out questionnaires about certain traits of their personality, for example, whether they like new experiences or tend to avoid risks. They were then given a glass of water with capsaicin, the plant chemical that makes a chili burn, mixed into it.

    By comparing the answers to the questionnaire and what participants said they felt about the spicy water, researchers found that those who tended to enjoy action movies or take risks were about six times more likely to enjoy the spicy water.

    Interestingly, we used to believe that the reason some people can withstand spicy food is that their tongues have become less sensitive to it. However, this latest study has found otherwise. "It's not that it doesn't burn as badly, it's that you actually learn to like the burn," Hayes explained.

    The loud noise of the cars or the sound of a plane can force its way into the deepest forest, yet it's not only humans that are bothered by the noise.

    Bioacoustician Bernie Krause has been studying the effect of noise pollution on wildlife, and has come across some interesting behaviors, especially among animals that communicate by sound, like humans. Birds use sound to communicate, but in noisy places, these animals have to shout over the natural noise to be heard.

    Krause mentions a study of nightingales(夜莺) to explain what he means. The birds responded to（回应） traffic noise by singing louder and louder until they actually went beyond noise pollution standards in the city. To belt out (sing loudly) their songs, they increased their lung pressure fivefold, but scientists say that this is not dangerous for the birds themselves.

    Studies show that sudden noise can cause certain birds to leave their nests, leaving the young to their enemies. One study also showed that songbirds that nested close to busy motorways were much less productive than those that nested farther away. Mammals（哺乳动物）too are affected(影响). A recent study showed that nursing caribou（驯鹿） responded to plane noise by not producing enough milk to feed their young.

    In some cases noise pollution can actually help some animals while harming others. Toads（蟾蜍）and frogs are known to sing in union（同步发声）so that no predator (their enemies) can catch them. Krause found that when planes flew overhead and disturbed the toad's song, they lost their union, and it took them 45 minutes to get it back again. That gave their natural enemies plenty of time to find and catch individual toads by sound.

    According to Kruse, 'Not only will noise pollution bother wildlife, but it won't help our lives either.'

Zach Conti, who is a student in Eastern Michigan University and joined the football team as a walk-on (临时队员) in 2020, has worked at several part-time jobs to pay for his education. Now he won't have to anymore.

"Football is something I really love, so ever since I got to school, I've had to do whatever it takes to stay here and stay in a good position with my studies and football," Conti said. "I have to do many jobs, but when you really want something, you won't feel bored."

While Conti's teammates would see him going to or coming back to work, they were very supportive. But Conti still had trouble paying for his education and his mother's medical bills. He was planning on leaving the university.

Brian Dooley, who would get a scholarship, couldn't see that happen and decided to help his teammate. He told head coach Chris Creighton about the thing. Creighton went to see if an additional scholarship could be given out. The school allowed the team to give out five scholarships and another one was not allowed. Then Dooley went to the coach with a special request.

"Brian Dooley comes into my office," Creighton said during a team meeting on August 3. "And he says, ‘Coach, Conti should get a scholarship. And I've talked this over with my family. And if there's a way to make this happen, I am willing to give up my scholarship as a gift to Conti.'" That's when Dooley walked over to Conti and handed him an envelope with the scholarship inside.

Dooley explained the reason for helping his teammate "I did it because I've seen Conti grow over the long time. It would be a great pity if he walked away from something that he loves. He works so hard. In my eyes, he should get it 100 percent."